ARTICLES ABOUT POLICE RADIO BY DATE - PAGE 3

Tom Lashinski was walking his mother's small dog in the North Center neighborhood early Sunday when he noticed two people scuffling in an alley. "It was like something out of Batman ... with Batman jumping into someone and people rolling around and getting up and going back at it. " At first, he thought it was a drunken brawl that spilled from a bar. But as he got closer, he saw that it was a female Chicago police officer who had a man pinned...

The call crackled over the police radio — a possible suspect was on foot a few blocks away on North Michigan Avenue, so Officer Daniel Vazquez, several other newly minted cops and their instructor took off running to help out. Seven months ago, the chances of Vazquez being back in uniform and on the street like this seemed remote. In his final days of training last October, he was seriously injured when he was struck by a car after he stopped to help at a crash scene. "This is a big, big, big step for him to be out here," said Officer Michael Pettis, the police academy training instructor who was with Vazquez last week during the chase on the Magnificent Mile.

Three men suspected of fatally stabbing two people and shooting a police officer on the Far North Side also have been linked to as many as a dozen slayings across Chicago, law enforcement sources said Sunday. The three worked for a roofing company on the South Side. But law enforcement officials said they also believe the men peddled drugs, robbed and killed some of their narcotics customers, a source said. The group is suspected in several drug-related mass killings, including four men found fatally shot inside a West Lawn garage in September and three bound and gagged men found fatally beaten in a car in the McKinley Park neighborhood in April.

Two men were charged in connection with the armed robberies of two Bakers Square restaurants, including one that was held up Sunday night on the Far North Side, Chicago police said. Eugene Wright, 37, of the 6300 block of South Sangamon Street, and Michael Morgan, 27, of the 10600 block of South Racine Avenue, were each charged with felony armed robbery in the holdups, police said. Bail was set at $400,000 each for Wright and Morgan when they appeared for their bond hearing on the charges Tuesday before Cook County Criminal Court Judge Maria Kuriakos Ciesil.

Maybe those defined-benefit pensions aren't so lavish after all. Maybe there are some jobs so dangerous, so demanding of steady nerves and sound judgment under pressure, that the men and women who work them deserve the benefit of our doubts. Even when times are tough, even when most of us can only wish we could retire at age 50 with 75 percent of pay, maybe we should take a deep breath, dial down the envy, and just say: "Thanks, guys. You deserve every penny. " Chicago firefighters Edward Stringer and Corey Ankum will never get to enjoy their retirements or their defined-benefit pensions.

A veteran Park Ridge police lieutenant beat, kicked and choked two handcuffed teens after they shattered the rear window of his personal car with a slingshot four years ago, according to an indictment unsealed Monday in Cook County criminal court. Jason Leavitt, 39, silently shook his head in court as prosecutors recounted for a judge how Leavitt allegedly struck one of the 15-year-old boys on the back of the head with an unknown object, knocking him briefly unconscious, and stomped on the head of the other teen while he was face down on the ground in handcuffs.

Some jurors leaned in for a better look Tuesday as an image of a hunched, bare-chested Hector Delgado appeared on a television monitor on the fourth day of Delgado's trial for the murder of a Chicago police officer. The panel appeared to watch closely as Delgado, flanked by his parents during an interview hours after the June 2001 slaying of Officer Brian Strouse, leaned over a table and told a prosecutor he shot the officer by mistake. In the video, Delgado said he thought he was shooting at a rival when he pointed a handgun at a figure in an alley that turned out to be Strouse.

Motorola Inc. is installing a radio communications network for the Baghdad police force that should be operational in about four weeks, said the U.S. adviser to Iraq's rebuilt police forces. Schaumburg-based Motorola is providing 3,000 walkie-talkies for foot patrols and 350 two-way car radios and setting up 55 base stations, said Bernard Kerik, a former New York City police commissioner who is helping the U.S. military in Iraq revive the Iraqi police force. "Communication between the police and the public, and the police and the military, has been just about zero," Kerik said Wednesday.

An Inverness man accused of misusing a police radio channel and then scuffling with an officer who then died of a heart attack was ordered Friday to surrender his radio equipment to authorities. Cook County Circuit Judge Joseph Urso ordered William Bily, 56, to turn over his transmitting equipment, including a treasure-trove of ham radio gear, to Barrington-Inverness police by Tuesday as a condition of his release while he awaits trial. Bily of the 2000 block of Bradwell Road was arrested this week on misdemeanor charges of resisting a peace officer and interfering with emergency communications.